Scrum Teams and the Management, Part 2

In last week’s post, I discussed typical behaviors of management teams that undermine their software product development Scrum teams, and what to do about it.

Here, I will talk about a few unproductive Scrum team behaviors with regard to interaction with senior management teams, and what they should do to fix it.

I have seen these behaviors both in the expansion stage software companies in OpenView’s venture capital portfolio, and, via second hand description, at large enterprise organizations.

The behaviors include:

• Agreeing to everything management requests
  • To mitigate: The Scrum team should not blindly do whatever management teams request. They should carefully consider what is being asked, estimate it, and determine if they can realistically commit to these requests given their resources. Then, the team needs to communicate to management what it can and cannot commit to with supporting data, so management can learn and make better informed decisions.
• Pushing back in a nonconstructive fashion on management, without good explanation, supporting data, or alternative options
  • To mitigate: If the management team requests something the Scrum team cannot deliver, they should respond with, “We cannot deliver this on this time line, and here are 5 reasons why…but here is what we CAN deliver”, or “We can deliver this IF you provide us with….”, or “I do not yet know if we can commit to this. I will know in 2 weeks, depending on….”. In other words, tell management what you CAN provide given what you have today, and what you need from management to provide what they are asking. Using data, like velocity, etc., is a big plus. Answer management with options and useful information, not with a “no”.
• Not transparently communicating team issues and impediments to management
  • To mitigate: The Scrum team needs to be open about its impediments with management, especially those that it cannot resolve itself. This way, the management has a sense of what the team can and cannot commit to and why, and it can help the Scrum team. Note, the team should refrain from over-communicating to management small impediments that the Scrum team can and should resolve on its own.
• Asking management for more resources without having proper supporting analysis or first utilizing existing resources to optimal capacity
  • To mitigate:When there is a gap between what product management wants and what the development Scrum team thinks it can deliver, a natural impulse is to ask management for more resources. Instead, the first steps should be to determine the business value of what product management needs to build, and if it really needs all of it in the targeted time frame, and separately to determine if and how the Scrum team can do more. Once those options have been exhausted, the Scrum team, in conjunction with product management, should request more resources, using analysis to support their request.

As part of our operational services, OpenView Venture Partners helps our expansion stage portfolio companies resolve these issues, mainly by focused coaching from our senior Advisers, Jeff Sutherland and Luke Hohmann, and by forums and workshops on relevant topics (listed here: openviewpartners.com/events/index.html).